Place Vend¿¿me

by The Modern Jazz Quartet, The Swingle Singers

Overview

For a short time in the mid-'60s, the Modern Jazz Quartet were working primarily in Europe and recording for the French division of Philips, with the results coming out in the United States on the MJQ's regular label, Atlantic. There was only one exception to this rule: Place Vendome, which comprised the collaboration of the MJQ with the Swingle Singers, and which appeared in the U.S. on Philips' American subsidiary through Mercury Records. For Philips, the collaboration must have seemed like an inevitability; Ward Swingle had sung with the Double Six of Paris, which had backed up Dizzy Gillespie who, of course, had led the big band out of which the MJQ was formed in 1952. The Swingle Singers had been jazzing up the music of Johann Sebastian Bach since at least 1963 with phenomenal success, and while John Lewis wasn't quite as into the Bach bag in 1966 that he would be later, his MJQ compositions had long been taken up in European devices such as fugue and the renaissance Canzona. Although Swingle and Lewis agreed to collaborate backstage after an MJQ concert in Paris in 1964, it wasn't until 1966 that the two groups found themselves in Paris at the same time. The resultant album, Place Vendome, was a huge international success commercially, with the track "Aria (Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068)" -- though then popularly called "Air on a G String" -- charting strongly in Europe and the album easily earning its keep in the U.S., though it did not chart there. Not everyone was pleased; jazz critics savaged the album, the consensus being that a pop vocal group like the Swingle Singers had no business making an album with an exalted jazz group like the MJQ. ~ Uncle Dave Lewis

Product Details

Release Date:	10/28/2022
Label:	Universal
UPC:	4988031524817
Rank:	108996

Album Credits

Performance Credits

The Swingle Singers   Primary Artist,Vocal Ensemble
The Modern Jazz Quartet   Primary Artist,Ensemble
Connie Kay   Drums
Percy Heath   Double Bass
Ward Swingle   Tenor (Vocal)
John Lewis   Piano
Milt Jackson   Vibraphone
Jose Germain   Bass (Vocal)
Jean Cussac   Bass (Vocal)
Claude Germain   Tenor (Vocal)
Christiane Legrand   Soprano (Vocal)
Claudine Meunier   Alto (Vocals)
Janette Baucomont   Soprano (Vocal)
Alice Herald   Alto (Vocals)
Jeanette Beaucomont   Soprano (Vocal)

Technical Credits

Paul Horn   Composer
Ward Swingle   Arranger
John Lewis   Arranger,Composer,Remix Supervision
Henry Purcell   Composer
Daniel Richard   Reissue Coordinator,Reissue Coordination
Joseph Lewis   Composer
Tokiwa Kinoshita   Mixing,Mixing Engineer
Pierre Fatosme   Producer,Recording
Dominique Bernard   Reissue Coordinator,Reissue Coordination
Jacques Aubert   Photography
Johann Sebastian Bach   Composer